Gabriela Cristu

(Romania)

A brief statement of my work

It always was the human being that inspired me. EVERYTHING happens around it and I love to discover its magic, to draw in scapes, a feeling or a message, to capture what cannot be rendered in words. To draw as if there were not sufficient words around, only images which, brought together, trigger frames of mind; similar to bringing substances in a crucible. My original idea is metamorphosed with a clarity that is difficult to explain according to any logic. Just like our lives. In my work the human being is I.

Gabriela Cristu.

(…) ’’ The Ovidian cycle of metamorphoses-peoples changing into animals, plants and lifeless matter-could best be identified in Gabriela Cristu’s huge tapestry « diary of a Moment « , which evokes the miraculous transformations of old. It is not a contemporary adaptation of a single story, but rather a surrealist vision suffused with historical, mythological, religious, and artistic references, such as the creation of the world and, in it, of man, in parallel with evolution teaching also; the story of Icarus; and the origins of biological species. This last process, however, seems to have been reversed. The Romanian artist’s vision indirectly evokes the cataclysm that the region, and especially Romania, has experienced in the last two decades ‘’

(…) ’’ Of the figurative weaves that do not consist of multiple parts, we must in any case mention the bold ‘’Diary of a Moment’’, by Gabriela Cristu. The size and the level of detail of the weave are linked to those of traditional tapestry art. Owing to the figuration shown, this to a fantasy world ‘’.

2011 – « Web of Europe » exhibition from 20 May to 14 August, Royal Museums of Art and History-Brussels, Belgium, Contemporary paraphrases of an eighteenth – century Brussels tapestry.

A creative process based on known European tapestry artists, this project was launched by the Budapest-based Ildikó Dobrányi Foundation in conjunction with the Hungarian Cultural Institute in Brussels. A number of 27 artists were invited to participate for this initiative.

2011 – » Web of Europe » to Budapest; exhibition from 13 October to 27 November at the Museum of Applied Arts, Budapest. www.webofeurope.eu